novelraw Chapter 422 411: Karma Gate
Chapter 422 411: Karma Gate
Following the instructions of the Heavenly Dragon method, Priam mapped his meridians. The spiritual network distributed the aether throughout his body, and by feeding only certain pathways he watched what looked like a three-dimensional rune appear. More precisely, it was a glyph. The technique drew a distinction between the two terms that escaped Priam.
Still, the mere act of creating it challenged his aether proficiency, and Priam couldn't help but admire the System that had first designed this method of body tempering, then tailored it to him.
A second after its birth, the pattern resonated with the primal fluid and began to alter reality. Following the instructions available to him, Priam increased the amount of aether in the targeted meridians until not a single drop circulated elsewhere in his body. This way of kickstarting the gate wasn't necessary, but it sped up the formation process. In his case, every second counted. The pain that pierced his soul ensured he wouldn't forget it.
His body began to hum with energy. Despite [Adaptive Golden Meridians], Priam felt a wave of heat run through him. Part of the magical energy dissipated as heat and without his exceptional constitution he would have immolated himself. As expected from a method capable of initiating the transformation of a human into a true dragon, the attributes required to practice it were out of reach for ninety-nine percent of Tier 0s. The Juggernaut was an exception.
Once ready, a segment of the draconic ritual activated. The three-dimensional glyph condensed the available aether until the fluid began to solidify. Soon, a micro-core would reveal itself.
While monitoring the forming seed of his future gate, Priam made his way back to the square where he had left Kazuki a few minutes earlier.
"Bloody hell," he muttered, before smoke and the stench of death forced him into a cough.
Of the buildings that once ringed the square, nothing remained but ruins, their timbers feeding fierce flames. Only the central dais had been spared, shielded by the mountain of corpses that hid it from the fire's gaze. Priam counted about a hundred corpses, nine out of ten bearing feline features. At the top of the grisly pile lay a corpse he needed a few seconds to recognize. Sig-something. A Tier 3 Aelbe.
If Kazuki hadn't taken the time to bury or burn his own, it meant the battle wasn't over. The front had simply shifted a kilometer farther. That was where his friend would be.
Bounding from rooftop to rooftop toward the fighting, Priam couldn't help but glance at the street below. Hundreds of bodies littered the packed earth, most of them Aelbe. Dazed, the young man stared at the massacre, unable to understand. The feline clan didn't have that many warriors. His mind found an explanation that Priam refused. Yet, watered by the evidence, doubt grew in his mind like a tree, and every attempt to prune it failed. Fuck. How can I claim the Zenith if I'm afraid of the truth?
Dropping to the ground, Priam shivered at the wet, spongy sound beneath him. He looked down. His feet had sunk a centimeter deep into damp soil. It hadn't rained in days.
The metallic tang clawing at his nostrils offered a terrible clue, but Priam needed certainty. Dipping his finger into a nearby puddle, he raised it to the light. Not black, but a crimson darkened by shadow. The red of blood, sometimes lit by the glow of the flames devouring the encampment.
"Shit," Priam murmured. "Kazuki was supposed to cut the tiger's head off, not slaughter its cubs." The words had barely left his mouth when a thread sprang from his soul to connect him to a corpse.
"Y—You…"
Priam jolted, startled. When no attack came, he scanned his surroundings and found no living soul. On guard, he approached the source of the groan and found an Aelbe lying on the ground. [Kinetic Sovereignty] detected no sound waves coming from the body. The absence of a pulse had deceived him, and even his fate vision saw nothing. That said everything.
The youth was a Tier 1 with his chest caved in. His heart looked more like minced meat than muscle, which explained the silence. The miracle of his survival lay solely in the core embedded in his abdomen. A famous ritual was burning its bearer's aether, not to save his life, but to catapult him into his next one. Like a true cat.
In vain. One by one, the nine sigils faded, vanishing for reasons beyond Priam's grasp.
"Yes?" Priam asked the dying boy.
Time was short, but the last words of a sapiens mattered. Illusory as it may have been, this world reflected reality, and in the heart of a charnel ground for which he could not entirely absolve himself, Priam felt the need to do one good thing.
"You one of ours?" the teenager breathed. His glassy eyes swept over Priam without seeing him. What a waste.
"No."
A sigh. "Shit."
Priam was startled by the absence of hatred in that word. Nor did the thread binding him to the Aelbe shift to red. Instead, it gleamed a splendid bronze whose meaning the Juggernaut couldn't decipher.
A flash of pain crossed his whole body. Falling to his knees under the spasm, Priam wiped the corner of his mouth and found blood.
"You dying too?"
"You could say that. I have to go."
Karmic pressure leaked through [Homo Elysian Obsession], coiling around his flesh like a constrictor. Sharing the burden of his soul with his body bought him minutes, but it hampered his movements.
"Wait!"
Priam stopped. Not because of the plea, but because, for the first time since the start of the High Tribulation, the noose tightening around his soul eased. He raised his eyes, and the reason revealed itself under fate vision. The karmic thread connecting him to the Aelbe strained in the opposite direction, pulling with the desperate strength of someone facing death.
If Priam understood the how, he had no idea of the why.
"I don't hear your footsteps anymore. Either you flew away, or you're still here."
"I'm still here. If you want to talk about all these dead… that's not what I wanted," Priam sighed.
"Ah, who cares? The boss told us everything. If we want to survive, we have to invade your planet. And you lot don't want that. Logical. So we fight, and the winner might survive. It's basic jungle law," the Aelbe said in the same tone one would use to discuss the weather.
"You talk like a cat."
"Thanks." A pause. "I think this is the end for me. If you meet a pretty girl with braids tied with a pink ribbon, tell her that Emile's last thought was for her."
Priam's throat tightened as he looked at the boy. One of many. He was surrounded by corpses, and each one had a story, a family, dreams.
"Does she have a name?"
"Elenor. May the Concepts grant that I marry her in my tenth life."
"Your tenth—Ah, I got it." Cats had nine lives. "I'll tell her," Priam promised Emile.
The thread snapped, and half of it coiled around Priam's soul. It pulled against the noose, easing the pressure. Not by much, but his addon calculated it bought him another minute of life.
More importantly, the Juggernaut had just changed his mind about the organ which would host his karma gate.
The heat of the flames, the tang of explosives and the cries of the dying hit Priam long before he reached the front. When the clashes were only two hundred paces away he stopped. He didn't forget the most important thing: temper his resistance. That was why he was here, and in this illusory world everything else was secondary.
To his right, the gaping wall of a house revealed a hammock in good condition.
Priam settled into it, gathering his thoughts for the second stage of his tempering.
Forging a gate meant creating a physical base for a resistance, multiplying its effectiveness. Intriguing on its own—but if Braato was right, anchoring a skill carried another effect: ownership. More than an external tool, the gate became part of oneself, able to resonate directly with aether through body tempering and Micro. One more step toward the Zenith.
It also meant the physical anchor was controllable through his Supremacy like a muscle. Before he had known that, Priam had agonized over where to place them—and truth be told, he still hesitated. The method required an organ, one that would then be unavailable. As tempering was irreversible, the smallest mistake could prove catastrophic, as with Béchar. The overseer of Humanity's Colosseum had accepted a post for a century in exchange for the System's help to recast his physique. A fifth of his lifespan, for the chance to restart his body tempering. To hurl himself once again toward the Zenith.
Knowing that, how could Priam do any less than his absolute best in planning his own Path? For that reason, he had spent the last month brainstorming possibilities with his friends, reviewing every previous choice. So far, he had no regrets.
The brain for Order. Seat of reason, the organ that gave meaning to a chaotic world. Better still, it stored every scrap of knowledge Priam had gathered, echoing [Ciphered Record].
The eye, window to the Soul. His left eye already bore a curse capable of erasing his foes, so it seemed only fitting that the right would anchor [Free Will].
Beyond these two, Priam had already mapped out the placement of several other gates. One central bone seemed perfectly suited for Matter. He still wavered between his sternum and his spine.
Karma, by comparison, had given him far more trouble. Once he discarded the stupidest proposals—and the organs already reserved for other gates—only the kidneys remained. On Earth, more than half of all transplants involved them. For a Concept rooted in connection between individuals, that made for an argument, however feeble. It was the only one Priam had, and that alone irritated him. All the more since there was no real link between [Karmic Consequence Resistance] and the kidneys. The same went for [Rule Breaker].
"But now, I've got another idea," Priam whispered, rocking in his hammock.
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All he had to do was look beneath his crown to see a copper thread supporting his soul—the result of a spoken promise to a dying Aelbe. Not much, perhaps, but he had given his word, and that had been enough to weave karma between them. A talk held less weight than an act, but Priam's words were not without meaning. If lies were chains, then the Juggernaut would speak the truth. At least to those he deemed worthy.
Replaying that moment in his head, Priam caught himself thinking about language. A social construct whose purpose was to communicate. To accept a contract. To swear an oath.
To weave bonds. To create karma.
To declare one's intentions—to others, to oneself, and sometimes to the world.
"I refuse to let anyone use my ties with those I love to chain me," Priam declared on a whim. The wind carried away his words, and [Rule Breaker] thrummed. The resistance had finally found a target, and it pressed with all its strength against the rules of the High Tribulation. Without much success, but enough to confirm the power of words.
Priam smiled. No organ could mirror his deeds, not even his hands. In that case, his vocal cords would be the voice of his defiance against karma. That felt right.
[Location similarity detected between host's first three gates and first three yoga's chakras. Mythic Origin likely. Story Potential.]
"Not sure the correspondences will hold, but I'll take that as validation," mused Priam, pulling out the heart of the necro-chimera. The organ was the size of his head. He eyed the trophy he was about to force down his throat with thinly veiled distaste. "Well, could've been worse. Jasmine suggested my anus as a gate to get rid of shitty karma."
Before swallowing the trophy, Priam first guided the gate seed created by the draconic ritual a few minutes ago through his meridians, up to his larynx. There, between the trachea and the mouth, lay the vocal cords.
Taking a deep breath before his throat was blocked, he stretched his jaw to cram the heart inside—the possibilities offered by a high enough agility were fascinating. At the same time, Micro helped him swallow the wrong way. A brutal application of his kinetic proficiency managed to push the heart into his throat. Eyes stinging with tears, Priam triggered the second phase of the draconic ritual as quickly as possible.
The glyph woven through his meridians pulsed, vaporizing the trophy into a cloud of darkness. At last rid of the organ, Priam rubbed his aching jaw, still afraid to breathe.
A second pulse scoured away every trace of necro-corruption, leaving only a heterogeneous mist. Black draconic wisps mingled with blue karmic currents, refusing to merge.
Both affinities seemed drawn to the pseudo-core, yet repelled each other. A third pulse broke the stalemate, multiplying the crystal's magical gravity. The two-toned cloud plunged toward the gate seed, fertilizing it like a nebula birthing a star.
Priam shut his eyes, relying on Micro to monitor the process. This was the most dangerous stage, for the crystal lodged in his throat held enough aether to level half the Aelbe district. For all his unhealthy love of pyromania and explosions, the Juggernaut was far less fond of bombs jammed inside his windpipe.
The next step was a sinecure: to verify that Priam had won the trophy himself. Or at the very least, that he was worthy of it.
The gate embryo trembled as several wills manifested within it. Sphinx's ego brushed Priam's soul, offering the mental equivalent of a hug before dissolving. Then came the shadow of the System, vanishing before Priam could feel fear. The necro-chimera never appeared. Instead, the specter of Seth latched onto the Juggernaut's mind and poured in a torrent of hatred. In the background, the influence of the Necromoon lurked close. A genuine Tier 9, whose smallest fragment of attention could crush even the toughest mind.
"Osiris is less than a kilometer from me."
"..."
In the depths of that sickened consciousness, a glimmer of hope and kindness rose, cutting the connection. The pseudo-gate quieted, ready for the final stage of its conception.
Priam granted himself ten seconds to inspect his work, ensuring no backdoor had been planted. Floating between mouth and lungs, a crystal of aether waited to anchor [Rule Breaker]. The third phase could begin.
The Heavenly Dragon's three-dimensional glyph ignited once more. From a sphere, the gate embryo unfolded into a ring that encircled his vocal cords and the meridian woven through them. Wielding his aether proficiency like chisels, Priam carved a minuscule rune onto the gate. Its twin was etched into the third layer of his soul: [Rule Breaker].
The connection between gate and resistance was now sealed. Enough for a mediocre tempering. Heavenly Dragon aimed higher.
The fledgling aetherist continued his work with a lattice of draconic runes, sublime and complex. The base of a ritual designed to adapt. The foundation of the future of Body Tempering. One of the secrets of the seraphic method.
When Priam finally released his focus, the gate resembled the One Ring under a flame—minus the gold sparkle. It was a crystalline circle, the physical anchor of an epic and ideal resistance, capable of carrying him further on the path to the Zenith.
"But first, time to temper!"
Thrumming with impatience and magical potential, the Karma Gate awaited forging in the flames of a karmic trial. For that, Priam was in exactly the right place.
Under his vision, a myriad of threads strangled his soul. One resistance struggled against them: [Rule Breaker]. True to its name, it fought against the rule of the High Tribulation, against the spiritual pressure of karmic bonds, against the crushing weight of every promise, contract, and commitments ever forced onto Priam. This battle was the crucible of a wondrous evolution, while the danger, a catalyst.
On the surface of the nascent gate, draconic runes multiplied. As [Rule Breaker] fought to shatter Priam's chains, an unfathomable ritual devoured the remnants of the struggle. Information on karmic bindings, on the mutagenic potential of body and soul, on the reactions of every party involved—the Heavenly Dragon's ritual absorbed and refined it all, thus amplifying the scope and efficacy of the resistance. The anchor resonated with its soul-bound rune, raising the skill's potency and claiming it as its own.
That was already impressive, but the Juggernaut wanted more. Time was running out.
So, he stopped holding back. Forty-three thousand five hundred and ninety-three Potential points—the entirety of the stockpile he had hoarded these past months by defying the impossible—he poured all of it into the ideal resistance and its gate. Opening the valves of an artificial revelation, Priam unleashed the resource without restraint.
POT -100
POT -100
Like a plant with fertilizer, the gate vibrated with joy as its growth accelerated.
POT -100
Each second, the Ace burned through the lifetime savings of a weak Tier 0, without the slightest remorse. Already, he felt the skill swelling metaphorically, catching up on the ground lost by its recast. The formation of draconic runes on the gate's surface hastened. Then, the resistance advanced.
Lvl Up: [Rule Breaker] lvl 20
CHAR +3
Meta (Chance) +6
Just one level, but Priam exhaled in relief. The pressure on his soul hadn't lessened, but he could endure it better. He had just bought himself a minute. I've got… three left? Four at most.
Time was short, and progress could no longer wait. If he didn't find a solution soon, Priam would have to run with his tail between his legs, praying his gate's state was still salvageable. That thought alone set him boiling, his hearts raging with anger. The Juggernaut simply couldn't accept such an outcome. Defeat was a bad habit he had no intention of picking.
POT -100
So, Priam focused on Micro. The Supremacy granted him a supernatural perception of his body, which he used to connect to the pseudo-gate. Not as a tool, but as a muscle. Or rather, a nerve. Naturally, a packet of information arrived.
Synchronized with the rune engraved on his very soul, the anchor was trying to resist the karmic bonds strangling him. A battle it couldn't win. The gate was physical, too distant from those intangible threads to exert much force. Like pedaling a bicycle underwater, the terrain itself crippled it. Once tempering was complete, it would be a different story, but for now his efforts bled away to nothing.
For the same reason, the tempering was suboptimal. At this rate, even burning Potential without restraint, Priam would die several times over before finishing the draconic runes covering his gate. An inadvisable state of affairs, given he was down to his last life.
Something had to change, and he knew what. Flexing Micro, Priam commanded his pseudo-gate to stop fighting the karmic threads wrapped around his soul. Instead, he gave it a new target: his body.
POT -100
As a racial Talent, [Homo Elysian Obsession] was a link between body and soul. To wound one harmed the other, and healing passed equally between them. A truth Priam now intended to turn to his advantage. That bond had left his body paralyzed beneath the same crushing pressure that smothered his soul. If the pseudo-gate couldn't aid the latter, it could certainly relieve the former.
Which it did. As soon as it detected the karmic force restraining the body it inhabited, [Rule Breaker]'s anchor thrummed and charged into the fight. Instantly, Priam felt lighter. A few stretches confirmed he had regained some of his range of motion. And the good news didn't come alone: the pressure on his soul had halved. Enough to double the countdown to his end.
POT -100
Lvl Up: [Rule Breaker] lvl 21
CHAR +3
Meta (Chance) +6
"At this rate, factoring in my resistance's growth, I've got…"
[Eight minutes.]
"And how long to finish tempering?"
[Fifteen minutes.]
"Not even close," sighed Priam before hopping out of his hammock. "Let's defeat the odds. Once again."
He left the building, turned left, and walked toward the sound of fighting.
A magical sonar swept through him without detecting his presence. [Ciphered Record] kept him veiled. Alerted, Priam spotted a hoplite sentinel on a nearby rooftop. On impulse, the Juggernaut matched his body temperature to the ambient air and muffled the sounds of his hearts and digestion. As Jasmine had taught him, he was now a phantom.
Walking from blaze to fire, from pyre to conflagration, he slipped past four guards before reaching the end of the street. There, a hoplite transport hovered. A black slab the size of a tennis court, serving as a mobile command post.
Two strides for momentum, and Priam vaulted straight into the heart of the command center. Guards finally spotted him and leveled their spears. The Juggernaut felt about as threatened as if they had been brandishing forks.
"Let him be," ordered Kazuki, eyes fixed on the battlefield. "He's here to kill me."
Priam burst out laughing. He was the only one.
Status:
PHYSICAL:
Strength 1 259
Constitution 2 297
Agility 1 659
Vitality 2 213
Perception 998
MENTAL:
Vivacity (D) 666
Dexterity 988
Memory 1 219
Willpower 1 310
Charisma 1 022 (+12)
META:
Meta-affinity (O) 1 459
Meta-focus 902
Meta-endurance 1 686
Meta-perception 876
Meta-chance 1 392 (+25)
Meta-authority 1018
Potential: 42 999 (-594)
Tier 0
[Tribulation]: Five Tribulations pending.
Next thresholds: 12 attributes > 1 200 / 3 attributes > 1 800 / 1 attribute > 2 400
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